Previews

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Bethesda leapfrogs over the pack to give the world a hint of the next generation of games will look like.

Spiffy:

Unbelievable graphics, living world system, new combat system, construction kit.

Iffy:

The wait until we get our hands on it, can a world this big really be focussed?

Bethesda Softworks has never been a company that could be accused of thinking small. Their flagship property, The Elder Scrolls series of RPGs, have always been known for their vastness and wide-open feeling. Long before anyone ever came up with the idea for an MMO, Bethesda was hard at work creating enormous artificial worlds inside the PC in which one could get lost. Their last game, however, Morrowind (along with its two expansion packs, Tribunal and Bloodmoon), went far beyond what even the company's most die-hard fans could have expected.

Morrowind was literally a world in which you could do anything you set your mind to. Want to go on the main quest of the story? Go ahead. Want to forget the quest and just become the wealthiest merchant in the land? The game could handle it. Perhaps you'd like to join a tribe of werewolves and bring pain and death down on the human inhabitants of Tamriel. The game could handle that too. Morrowind offered the huge worlds of exploration and adventure that make MMOs so compelling, but the experience was personalized for the player, something impossible in an MMO.

Even better, an Xbox version of the game opened the series up to a new group of fans. Console warriors who may have cut their teeth on Japanese-style RPGs discovered the very different but no less compelling D&D/Western-style RPG by finally getting their hands on one of the best in breed.

Once you've achieved something as monumental as Morrowind though, what do you do for an encore? Simple: jump to the head of the line. Rather than just going for the guaranteed moneymaker that would be another Xbox Elder Scrolls, Bethesda is bringing the next game in the series to the next generation of PCs and consoles. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is being designed around the Xbox 2 (and the PS3, although the company could not officially confirm any platform besides the PC).

"We've always viewed The Elder Scrolls as a series that presents worlds no one else has ever imagined being done," said Todd Howard, the game's producer. "We love pushing the edge in every respect." According to Howard, when the Oblivion team started thinking about the project in mid-2002, they already had a couple of things they wanted to accomplish in the next game. "We aim to create 'The RPG for the Next Generation,' and this is not just in terms of visuals and platforms." Howard said, "It's in terms of how RPGs are played and experienced. It's time to move RPGs forward and really show how entertaining they can be." In a moment of candor, however, he also admitted that the length of time it takes to create an RPG also factored in the decision. Since the team knew there was no way this game would be complete before 2005 when the current generation of consoles would be reaching the end of their lives, they decided instead to "go big and go early" and create a game that would make a big early splash during the next gaming cycle.